Duchess of Malfi - Interpretations + Context

Question 1

What was the reaction when it was performed in Shakespeare’s globe in 2014

Answer 1

One paper called it a ‘grisly tragedy’, another a ‘gory melodrama’

Question 2

What is the significance of Italy

Answer 2

Birthplace of the renaissance and centre of Catholic authority - provoked Jacobean dramatists with a horrid fascination

Potent theatrical metaphor - allowed dramatists to obliquely criticise the favouritism of James I court and to common on the religious hypocrisy under the guise of attacking scarlet-cloaked cardinals

Question 3

What is the play based on

Answer 3

There was a real-life Duchess of Amalfi who was widowed in 1498, married and fled from her brothers

Webster took the story from a book called Palace Pleasure and embroidered it with ‘great skill’

Question 4

Why is Webster’s heroine/protagonist unusual at the time

Answer 4

Focuses on a woman who exercises independent political power

Question 5

How does the Duchess reverse the gender roles

Answer 5

Teasing and wooing Antonio

Also breaks the social and political obligation that the nobility marry their equals

Question 6

Webster bases his plot on………….., every character has a secret with many episodes in the play depicting……….or overhearing

Answer 6

Secrecy

Spying

Question 7

How does T.S.Elliot describe Webster

Answer 7

“Much possessed by death”

Question 8

What does poet Rupert Brooke state

Answer 8

Talked about the “Foul and indestructible vitality” of Webster’s characters (these plays are about life and its awful and inevitable moral compromises, rather than about death)

Webster’s scalpel uncovers the “skull beneath the skin” - as he explores without favour, how flawed humans love, love and plot against a background of dispassionate self-interest

Question 9

What do many of Webster’s other plays feature (The White Devil)

Answer 9

Teat lawyers and the legal system with bitterness - suggesting his personal detachment from it

Question 10

What does Emma Smith state

Answer 10

“Rather than being possessed by death, Webster’s worlds show us the desperate struggle to survive in a corrupted society”

Question 11

“The play’s unambivalent………………..becomes clear when we compare Webster’s………with that of his source, Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’

Answer 11

Femeinocentric

Title

Question 12

What does Dympna Callaghan sate about the Duchess’ predicament

Answer 12

“Webster’s widowed Duchess escapes neither the confinement nor the brutality so often meted out to woman in the real world since her wicked brothers…seek to destroy her”

Question 13

“In defying her brothers…the Duchess……………………………………….(Dympna Callaghan)

Answer 13

Transgresses a cultural prejudice against widows who remarried

Question 14

In Elizabethan society - why did some widows remarry

Answer 14

As protection from coercion and harassment for themselves and their children

Question 15

Dympna Callaghan - “Webster presents the Duchess not as an………………………………, but as real and fully………..

Answer 15

Oversexed pleasure-seeker

Human

Question 16

Expand on “I am the Duchess of Malfi still”

Answer 16

Insist on the moral triumph of the Duchess’ stoicism in the face of death

Question 17

What does the absence of the Duchess in Act 5 suggest

Dympna Callaghan

Answer 17

Insights on the necessity of looking squarely at the aftermath of the male violence to which she has been sacrificed

“Her absence, the gaping wound of the play, encourages us to question a world without women. And if that’s not feminist, then I don’t know what is”

Question 18

How does Boklund see Julia as

Answer 18

“A parody of the Duchess, designed to undercut and qualify her values…to find a tragic flaw in the Duchess reflected nd confirmed in Julia”

Question 19

Give a counter-argument to critics suggesting that Julia seems to be a fulfilment of the brother’s degraded vision of the Duchess

Answer 19

Yet very early in 2.4, Julia’s words and stage actions begin to contradict the Cardinal’s version of her

Her speech with its anxious, halting rhythm, betrays the deep inner struggle of a woman who has compromised herself for uncertain gain and finds herself the victim of a cynical and abusive man

Question 20

Give two readings of stage presentations generally opting for an emphasis on the extreme lasciviousness of Julia

Answer 20

May affirm the satire of the corrupted church - by emphasizing the Cardinal’s sin and hypocrisy

Could also affirm his misogynistic attitude to his mistress as a whore

Question 21

Those who emphasise the analogies between the duchess and Julia come perilously close to reading the play as a…………………………Those who concentrate on the differences tend to exaggerate the……………..of the Duchess and read the play as a melodrama

Underlying both of these perspectives is another implicit moral judgement - that Julia is meant to be condemned as a wanton,……………., morally………………woman

Answer 21

Cautionary tale

Saintliness

Promiscuous

Reprehensible

Question 22

Did Julia appear in the original story

Answer 22

NO

Webster clearly thought the character had an important role in the architecture of the plot and the construction of the thematic argument

Question 23

Give a quote from the Cardinal that presents a constant woman as an impossibility

Answer 23

“To view another spacious world i’th’moon/ And look to find a constant woman there”

Question 24

Give some context for the Chain of Being

Answer 24

The feudal societies of the Middle Ages, ruled by an aristocracy of landowners, were based on a clear hierarchy

The hierarchy was justified, intellectually, by the idea of nature itself being composed of clear levels

Question 25

What is the Ptolemaic model of the Universe and what does it link to

Answer 25

The Earth was at the centre of the universe, but also at its lowest point

Power over events radiated down from heaven in distinct levels. Chain of Being

Question 26

According to the Medieval catholic Church (and Aristotle’s philosophy), everything in the universe had a…….in a divinely planned and………….universe

Answer 26

Place

Unchangeable

Question 27

Give a quote from Delio about superstition and some analysis

Answer 27

“How superstitiously we mind our evils/The throwing down of salt, or crossing of a hare”

During the Reformation, the Catholic church was criticised for encouraging rituals

Protestants believed that superstitious practices implied a belief in magic + involvement of evil spirits

Question 28

Give some context for the horoscope

Answer 28

Believed in astrology - our fate is controlled/written in the stars

Protestants = pre-destination

Question 29

Give a quote from Antonio to Bosola about his malpractice

Answer 29

“You would look up to heaven, but I think The devil that rules the air stands in your light”

Question 30

Give some Machivllan context

Answer 30

Florentine political philosopher

Suggested that religion could be beneficial as an instrument of domination

Question 31

What does equivocation mean

Answer 31

To give an oath to confirm something, but can also be understood, through deliberately unclear or ambiguous language to mean the opposite

Used when Garnet member of gunpowder plot) claimed the right to give ambiguous answers during his trial to avoid incriminating himself

Question 32

What is the significance of Ferdinand entering the Duchess’ room

Answer 32

Enters between the line ‘I entered you into my heart’ and ‘before you would…call for the keys’

The prince inserts himself at the heart of his sister’s passion but also images himself as the recipient of the ‘key’ - being able to enter her body

ENters her private room - seats herself within her innermost privacy, as if he imagens himself within her body

Question 33

What does Mary Peake suggest about Ferdinand entering the Duchess’ room

Answer 33

“Ferdinand navigates himself into his sister’s sexual experience by physically concealing his presence within her private chamber”

Question 34

What colour is blood in Frecknall’s interpretation

Answer 34

Black - suggesting a court so corrupt that it has perverted nature

Question 35

How does Frecknall’s interpretation give the Duchess a sense of vulnerability

Answer 35

Only one to be barefoot in the first half

Question 36

How does Frecknall’s interpretation present the death of the woman

Answer 36

They loom on stage, the Duchess is particularly potent who haunts her oppressors

Ends on DUchess’ daughter, not son as in original

Question 37

What does Leah S Marcus state about the Ferdinand’s madness

Answer 37

“As the play progresses, Ferdinand’s madness is increasingly associated with rituals of Italian (and English) courts…
In early performances of the play, when Ferdinand sends madmen…the madmen onstage doubled the courtiers who had sycophantically surrounded Ferdinand before”

Question 38

What does Kate Aughterson assert about feminity

Answer 38

Saw women’s deaths as a ‘collision between corrupt political conservatism and individual freedom. Furthermore, political corruption os clearly linked to masculinity and individual freedom and justice to femininity”

Question 39

Give some analysis of Ferdinand’s waxworks

Answer 39

Amplifies the hate felt for Ferdinand

Lot of effort to pull off - highlights the lengths he’s prepared to go to rob the Duchess of her identity

Question 40

Give some examples of England being enswirled in catholic-protestant tensions

Answer 40

Gunpowder plot
Babington plot
Mary I
Spanish Armada

Question 41

How did Liz persecute Catholics

Answer 41

Act of Restraints - all Catholics to stay within 5 miles of their home + no large gatherings

Anyone who persuaded a protestant to become a catholic was punishable by death

Question 42

What does the Astrology being wrong signify

Answer 42

Criticises catholicism + amplifies the idea that we act upon our own free will

Question 43

Give some context of James I court

Answer 43

The security of having an heir was soon undermined by his extravagant habits + sexually ambiguous interests f the court

James’ court was filled with sycophants with frequent lavish feats to flaunt his wealth

Promoted many courtiers with a group of men specifically chosen because he found them physically attractive

Question 44

Give some woman context

Answer 44

Continued to live a life subordinated by men, beyond what they requested + made dependant on value relations

Numerous witchcraft accusations are regarded by many feminist historians as being an attack of women and an assertion of male power (most victims = women)

Question 45

Give a quote that highlight Ferdinand’s madness

Answer 45

“‘Look! What follows me’ - Tis your shadow - ‘Stay it! Let it not haunt me”

Question 46

Give some lycanthropy context

Answer 46

Stories of wolf-men, as a result of witchcraft or direct demonic intervention

One popular account of a German lycanthrope named Peter Stubbe asserts that Stubbe’s committed incest with his sister while in the shape of a wolf

• Webster makes Ferdinand’s lycanthropy, similarly, a reflection or embodiment of the lust for his sister, but it also resonates with images of spiritual predation, particularly in a Protestant demonisation of Catholicism

Protestant criticism of Catholic church - pope depicted as a wolf

Question 47

Give some context for remarriages

Answer 47

Not inevitably a recipe for tragedy - a popular topic for city comedy

Webster’s Duchess defies social and sexual orthodoxies in a way not dissimilar of comic widows. What lends itself to strategy in the Duchess’ situation is that unlike her comic counterparts, she is the head of state

Question 48

What was the overwhelming weight of (male) critical opinion about before the feminist movements of the 1970s + ’80s

Answer 48

The DUchess lacked a centre and focus for its action because critics tended to equate tragic centrality with masculinity

Question 49

The Duchess thus………………..her society’s notion of proper female…………..both in exercising her own will in a matter of personal and…………..choice and in choosing a husband who is her social……..

Answer 49

Transgresses
Conduct
Sexual
Inferior

Question 50

What does Dympna Callaghan assert about the brothers

Answer 50

“The Duchess’ brothers are the primary mouthpieces for the misogynistic discourse of the era”

Question 51

Give a quote from the Duchess complaining about her situation

Answer 51

“Why [she] of all the other princes in the world/Be cased up like a holy relic”

“She is neither a Catholic fetish object nor protestant funeral monument” - Callaghan

The play comes close to representing the lived realities of early modern English widows and the constraints upon their sexual choices

Question 52

How does the brother’s persecution of the Duchess link to context

Answer 52

Widowed women sometimes suffered harassment from male relatives or neighbours and so were forced to seek protection from a new husband

Question 53

What does the speed of which the Duchess remarries signify (Callaghan)

Answer 53

“The Duchess capacity to take action and initiative when her capacity to do so is severy restricted by her wider society and culture…Her brothers echo a cultural commonplace”

Question 54

Webster develops the Duchess’ character while simultaneously utilising and……….the…….discourses around women at the time, which presented them as either chaste……..or………….whores

Answer 54

Resisting
Polarised
Paragons
Lascivious

Question 55

What does Callaghan state about Webster’s portrayal of the Duchess

Answer 55

“Webster takes on the challenge of representing a woman who is both virtuous and sensual, and who embodies the virtues of a sexually fulfilling married life”

Question 56

While Bosola is the instrument for the Duchess’ tragedy, after her brave and……death his remorse is evident of the Duchess’…………………….

Answer 56

Stoic

Moral strength